This report provides a brief breakdown of funding sources for Ontario’s community housing sector. These analyses are based off data from Service Manager Annual Information Return (SMAIR), provincial funding for community housing construction, and National Housing Strategy (NHS) project-based funding data. These datasets were provided with little context or data definitions, so this report heavily relies on interpretation and assumptions. I plan to engage in some outreach to validate or contextualize this preliminary interpretations.
For a better look at the projects funded through the National Housing Strategy and their present status, see this NHS funds breakdown.
Here is an overview of the financial data made available to ONPHA. This displays total funding by funding source, see the following sections for a deeper look.
Data Sources:
Service Manager Annual Information Return (SMAIR) data: highlights annual operating subsidies for legacy programs and rent supplements. This view is broken down by “ongoing”, “targeted” and “one-time” funding. Following sections provide a breakdown of how the funding is distributed across these various programs.
National Housing Strategy project-based data: includes funding for new construction, repairs, and renewals, and includes the Affordable Housing Fund, Rapid Housing Initiative, Apartment Construction Loan Program, Federal Lands Initiative, and Affordable Housing Innovation Fund. This is the only data source that indicates if funds are in loans or in contribution.
Provincial funds for new community housing projects: limited to new projects completed or in the pipeline between 2020 and 2024. This data includes funds for new projects delivered in part through programs such as OPHI, COCHI, Indigenous Supportive Housing Program, Social Services Relief Fund and more.
I tied funding to year, but in an inconsistent manner, due to availability of dates provided in the data. NHS project-based data includes funding announcement date, and the provincial data includes project completion/expected completion dates.
Notes:
Important buckets of funding not available:
I understand these are largely separate buckets of funding, but I suspect there are overlaps in instances. For example, COCHI or OPHI funding could be a source of funding for rent supplement that is counted in the SMAIR as an operating subsidy, and theoretically that rent supplement could also be treated as a subsidy to support the finances for new construction. Also, NHS programs like the Affordable Housing Fund funded a very large number of repairs. It is possible that these funds are also counted in the SMAIR as an operating subsidy.
None of these values are inflation adjusted.
Note: this plot is interactive. Hover over the bars to see funding amounts by different sub categories or programs. Look at the icons on the top right of each plot to enable different interactive actions, such as scrolling in or zooming.
Here are the total annual operating subsidies again, but this time including a breakdown by program. Funding increased by $161 million between 2020 and 2023, and $95 million between 2022 and 2023.
Notes about the data:
Note: values are not inflation adjusted. This plot is interactive. Look at the icons on the top right of each plot to enable different interactive actions, such as scrolling in or zooming. Hover over the bars to see more details about the funding amounts and programs.
Public Housing, Rent Supplement, and Provincially Reformed programs are where most of the increased spending occurred. Section 95 Private Non-Profits, Pre 86 Urban Native, and Section 26/27 had large percentages of their funding lost since 2020.
Here are some possible reasons as to why we are observing these changes. I plan to do some outreach to try to validate these assumptions:
All funding types saw increases since 2020. Ongoing funding peaked at 2021 and has two consecutive decreases. One time funding increased over 200% just in the year 2023.
Here are some possible reasons as to why we are observing these changes. I plan to do some outreach to try to validate these assumptions: * Ongoing funding: The decrease in funding after 2021 may be related to expiration of service manager agreements. * Targeted funding: The increase in funding may be attributed to targeting recipients through increased rent supplements or through population specific approaches targeting Indigenous or homeless populations. * One-time funding: ??? Repairs? .
The following figures show the funding changes for each year compared to 2020. The text labels show the total funding change from 2020 (in thousands), and components that fall below the black line (negative values) are components of that funding that decreased from 2020. You can zoom into the plots to obtain a better view of any particular program.
Note: this plot is interactive. Look at the icons on the top right of each plot to enable different interactive actions, such as scrolling in or zooming. Hover over the bars to see more details about the funding amounts and programs.
In this view focused on funding type we see the following:
Note: this plot is interactive. Look at the icons on the top right of each plot to enable different interactive actions, such as scrolling in or zooming. Hover over the bars to see more details about the funding amounts and programs.
This data shows expenditures for types of rent reduction provided by the SMAIR data. These rent supplements can be distinct from the 02 Rent Supplement program, but it is unclear to me if there is overlap at all.
There is a very large cost increase in each expenditure category for a single year when looking at average cost per household. This is likely due to the fact that the cost of rent supplements and portable benefits correspond to growth in market rents. This may be a warning to growing our reliance on the private market.
I will build this out shortly.. In the meantime, a more devoted breakdown of the NHS can be found here
Note that unit counts are unreliable, there is a some degree of double counting: the data redacts any project identifying information. Projects that have received funding from more than one of these sources will effectively have their units double counted. I believe the majority of provincially funded units are also NHS funded, so I am deferring to NHS data on unit counts any ways.
There were 3,938 provincially-funded units completed in Ontario between 2020 and 2024. This is in comparison to 5,380 funded through the NHS. I believe the vast majority of provincially-funded units have NHS funding, so I am treating these as the same units. These unit counts should be used with caution. Due to the amount of information redacted in the dataset, I cannot identify projects that received funding from multiple provincial programs. This results in some projects being entered more than once and their units being double counted. I cannot evaluate how many units this results in, so I defer to the NHS numbers above for new construction counts.
| Status | Total Units | Affordable Units | Unaffordable Units | Funding Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Completed | 3,938 | 1,832 | 2,106 | $204,704,744 |
| Under Construction | 3,429 | 1,715 | 1,714 | $247,058,009 |
| Approved | 2,366 | 812 | 1,554 | $119,009,518 |
| Planning | 17 | 17 | 0 | $822,495 |
One important thing to note is that Federal transfers are a significant portion of these total funds. OPHI and COCHI are provincially administered National Housing Strategy programs, encompassing either joint funding, or Federal transfers. These two programs make up 49% of provincial funds for new construction since 2020.
Additionally, these two programs become a much larger portion of the funding for newer projects. They account for 56% of funding for projects not yet complete, and 67% of funding for projects that are approved or in the planning stage.
| Fund Source | Funding Amount | Number of Projects Funded | Total Units | Affordable Units | Unaffordable Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | $571,594,766 | 351 | 9,750 | 4,376 | 5,374 |
| Ontario Priorities Housing Initiative (OPHI) | $165,442,484 | 124 | 4,494 | 1,568 | 2,926 |
| Canada‐Ontario Community Housing Initiative (COCHI) | $115,675,072 | 60 | 2,016 | 744 | 1,272 |
| Social Services Relief Fund 4 | $102,131,347 | 55 | 999 | 713 | 286 |
| Social Services Relief Fund 2 | $82,345,173 | 53 | 861 | 649 | 212 |
| Indigenous Supportive Housing Program (ISHP) | $29,099,260 | 11 | 239 | 151 | 88 |
| Homelessness Prevention Program (HPP) | $25,032,601 | 18 | 450 | 190 | 260 |
| Community Housing Priority Projects for Municipalities (C | $24,150,000 | 1 | 271 | 138 | 133 |
| Home For Good (HFG) | $13,500,000 | 5 | 160 | 115 | 45 |
| Social Services Relief Fund 5 | $11,912,530 | 20 | 242 | 83 | 159 |
| Investment in Affordable Housing Extension Program | $2,306,299 | 4 | 18 | 25 | -7 |
Here I tied funding amount to the year of project completion or expected completion, as this is the only temporal data provided. This is likely not when all funding was actually allocated, but it provides a rough temporal sense of funding commitments.
Note: this plot is interactive. Look at the icons on the top right of each plot to enable different interactive actions, such as scrolling in or zooming. Hover over the bars to see more details about the funding amounts and programs.